Exercise is difficult – especially when it’s boring. You might want to fight those pounds in the gym or run them off, but there’s no way you’re going to manage it if you’re not interested in what you’re doing. The best thing for your wellbeing is to distract yourself from the fact that you’re exercising at all, and the way to do that is by changing your focus to a martial art like boxing, kickboxing, karate, or judo. That way, you’re concentrating on learning the moves rather than on what it’s doing for your fitness. Plus, there are multiple wellness benefits in martial arts.
1. Weight loss: Typically, martial art training is typically high intensity and lasts for at least an hour. This means that you’re getting a monumental cardio workout and burning a lot of calories in the process. This makes martial arts an excellent option if you want to lose weight quickly.
2. Fitness: The exercises and drills involved in martial arts improve your cardiovascular fitness and endurance by helping to improve your muscle strength and flexibility. This is because you do a lot of resistance training (push-ups and squats) and stretching exercises.
3. Self-defence: This is probably the most well-known outcome with martial arts, as you are learning a fighting technique. While martial arts-esque fitness programmes like Tae Bo and Boxercise are beneficial in multiple ways to your wellness, if you want to guard your wellbeing against an attack you need to train with a dedicated teacher in a martial arts school that teaches you a specific martial art.
4. Self-confidence: Not only are you now able to defend yourself, but you have a sense of achievement from mastering the techniques. This, plus the fact you’re fitter and stronger, can do wonders for your confidence.
5. Balance and coordination: Martial art training typically involves mastering a range of techniques, which will require you to be well-balanced and have superior body coordination. Therefore, learning these techniques will improve those areas, which can help with your daily life.
6. Variety: Within a martial arts session, there’s a great variety for your body and mind in terms of warm-ups and cool-downs, stretching exercises, strength building exercises, cardio exercises and exercises designed to teach you different techniques. Plus, as there are so many martial arts to get involved in, it’s easy to find one to keep you interested and help you achieve your goals.
7. Discipline and motivation: Martial arts are goal orientated, which helps to focus and motivate you to continue. Lack of discipline and motivation are common pitfalls to weight loss and even career progression, but learning these traits can directly and indirectly help you in these aspirations.
8. Spirituality: Someone once defined spirituality as “Activities which renew, lift up, comfort, heal and inspire both ourselves and those with whom we interact.” This remains a key reason why so many people practise martial arts, as it forges a connection between your body, mind, others and the world around you.
9. Cost-effectiveness: Most people join a gym and never go, or hire a personal trainer and give up after two sessions of intense shouting. By comparison, training with a martial arts school or dojo is relatively inexpensive, as they often offer a low monthly all-you-can-exercise price.
10. Socialising: Unlike running or going to the gym, martial arts provide the opportunity to train and learn with others, which means you can encourage and motivate each other. Many people doing martial arts end up becoming very good friends, and many instructors are lovely and foster a fun and friendly atmosphere. After all, if you don’t enjoy it, what’s the point?
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